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Brain and Behavior Sep 2023Individuals differ in how they judge facial attractiveness. However, little is known about the role of arousal level and gender differences in individuals' facial...
INTRODUCTION
Individuals differ in how they judge facial attractiveness. However, little is known about the role of arousal level and gender differences in individuals' facial attractiveness judgments.
METHODS
We used resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) to investigate this issue. A total of 48 men (aged 22.5 ± 3.03 years [mean ± SD], range: 18-30 years) and 27 women (aged 20.3 ± 2.03 years [mean ± SD], range: 18-25 years) participated in the experiment. After the EEG was collected, participants were instructed to complete a facial attractiveness judgment task. Connectome-based predictive modeling was used to predict individual judgment of facial attractiveness.
RESULTS
Men with high arousal judged female faces as more attractive (M = 3.85, SE = 0.81) than did men with low arousal (M = 3.33, SE = 0.81) and women (M = 3.24, SE = 1.02). Functional connectivity of the alpha band predicted judgment of female facial attractiveness in men but not in women. After controlling for the age and variability, the prediction effect was still significant.
CONCLUSION
Our results provide neural evidence for the enhancement of the judgment of facial attractiveness in men with high arousal levels, which supports the hypothesis that individuals' spontaneous arousal contributes to variations in facial attractiveness preferences.
Topics: Male; Humans; Female; Face; Beauty; Eye; Electroencephalography; Judgment
PubMed: 37367435
DOI: 10.1002/brb3.3132 -
Cortex; a Journal Devoted To the Study... Feb 2024Foundational work in the psychology of metacognition identified a distinction between metacognitive knowledge (stable beliefs about one's capacities) and metacognitive... (Review)
Review
Foundational work in the psychology of metacognition identified a distinction between metacognitive knowledge (stable beliefs about one's capacities) and metacognitive experiences (local evaluations of performance). More recently, the field has focused on developing tasks and metrics that seek to identify metacognitive capacities from momentary estimates of confidence in performance, and providing precise computational accounts of metacognitive failure. However, this notable progress in formalising models of metacognitive judgments may come at a cost of ignoring broader elements of the psychology of metacognition - such as how stable meta-knowledge is formed, how social cognition and metacognition interact, and how we evaluate affective states that do not have an obvious ground truth. We propose that construct breadth in metacognition research can be restored while maintaining rigour in measurement, and highlight promising avenues for expanding the scope of metacognition research. Such a research programme is well placed to recapture qualitative features of metacognitive knowledge and experience while maintaining the psychophysical rigor that characterises modern research on confidence and performance monitoring.
Topics: Humans; Metacognition; Judgment
PubMed: 38041921
DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2023.11.002 -
Cerebral Cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) May 2023The intention to name an object modulates neural responses during object recognition tasks. However, the nature of this modulation is still unclear. We established...
The intention to name an object modulates neural responses during object recognition tasks. However, the nature of this modulation is still unclear. We established whether a core operation in language, i.e. lexical access, can be observed even when the task does not require language (size-judgment task), and whether response selection in verbal versus non-verbal semantic tasks relies on similar neuronal processes. We measured and compared neuronal oscillatory activities and behavioral responses to the same set of pictures of meaningful objects, while the type of task participants had to perform (picture-naming versus size-judgment) and the type of stimuli to measure lexical access (cognate versus non-cognate) were manipulated. Despite activation of words was facilitated when the task required explicit word-retrieval (picture-naming task), lexical access occurred even without the intention to name the object (non-verbal size-judgment task). Activation of words and response selection were accompanied by beta (25-35 Hz) desynchronization and theta (3-7 Hz) synchronization, respectively. These effects were observed in both picture-naming and size-judgment tasks, suggesting that words became activated via similar mechanisms, irrespective of whether the task involves language explicitly. This finding has important implications to understand the link between core linguistic operations and performance in verbal and non-verbal semantic tasks.
Topics: Humans; Language; Visual Perception; Semantics; Linguistics; Judgment
PubMed: 36724048
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhac499 -
Journal of Vision Mar 2024The ability of humans to identify and reproduce short time intervals (in the region of a second) may be affected by many factors ranging from the gender and personality...
The ability of humans to identify and reproduce short time intervals (in the region of a second) may be affected by many factors ranging from the gender and personality of the individual observer, through the attentional state, to the precise spatiotemporal structure of the stimulus. The relative roles of these very different factors are a challenge to describe and define; several methodological approaches have been used to achieve this to varying degrees of success. Here we describe and model the results of a paradigm affording not only a first-order measurement of the perceived duration of an interval but also a second-order metacognitive judgement of perceived time. This approach, we argue, expands the form of the data generally collected in duration-judgements and allows more detailed comparison of psychophysical behavior to the underlying theory. We also describe a hierarchical Bayesian measurement model that performs a quantitative analysis of the trial-by-trial data calculating the variability of the temporal estimates and the metacognitive judgments allowing direct comparison between an actual and an ideal observer. We fit the model to data collected for judgements of 750 ms (bisecting 1500 ms) and 1500 ms (bisecting 3000 ms) intervals across three stimulus modalities (visual, audio, and audiovisual). This enhanced form of data on a given interval judgement and the ability to track its progression on a trial-by-trial basis offers a way of looking at the different roles that subject-based, task-based and stimulus-based factors have on the perception of time.
Topics: Humans; Bayes Theorem; Judgment; Metacognition; Time Perception
PubMed: 38506794
DOI: 10.1167/jov.24.3.5 -
Psychological Science Apr 2022People make subjective judgments about the healthiness of different foods every day, and these judgments in turn influence their food choices and health outcomes....
People make subjective judgments about the healthiness of different foods every day, and these judgments in turn influence their food choices and health outcomes. Despite the importance of such judgments, there are few quantitative theories about their psychological underpinnings. This article introduces a novel computational approach that can approximate people's knowledge representations for thousands of common foods. We used these representations to predict how both lay decision-makers (the general population) and experts judge the healthiness of individual foods. We also applied our method to predict the impact of behavioral interventions, such as the provision of front-of-pack nutrient and calorie information. Across multiple studies with data from 846 adults, our models achieved very high accuracy rates ( = .65-.77) and significantly outperformed competing models based on factual nutritional content. These results illustrate how new computational methods applied to established psychological theory can be used to better predict, understand, and influence health behavior.
Topics: Adult; Choice Behavior; Consumer Behavior; Food Labeling; Food Preferences; Humans; Judgment
PubMed: 35298316
DOI: 10.1177/09567976211043426 -
Memory & Cognition Jan 2022After learning about facts or outcomes of events, people overestimate in hindsight what they knew in foresight. Prior research has shown that this hindsight bias is more...
After learning about facts or outcomes of events, people overestimate in hindsight what they knew in foresight. Prior research has shown that this hindsight bias is more pronounced in older than in younger adults. However, this robust finding is based primarily on a specific paradigm that requires generating and recalling numerical judgments to general knowledge questions that deal with emotionally neutral content. As older and younger adults tend to process positive and negative information differently, they might also show differences in hindsight bias after positive and negative outcomes. Furthermore, hindsight bias can manifest itself as a bias in memory for prior given judgments, but also as retrospective impressions of inevitability and foreseeability. Currently, there is no research on age differences in all three manifestations of hindsight bias. In this study, younger (N = 46, 18-30 years) and older adults (N = 45, 64-90 years) listened to everyday-life scenarios that ended positively or negatively, recalled the expectation they previously held about the outcome (to measure the memory component of hindsight bias), and rated each outcome's foreseeability and inevitability. Compared with younger adults, older adults recalled their prior expectations as closer to the actual outcomes (i.e., they showed a larger memory component of hindsight bias), and this age difference was more pronounced for negative than for positive outcomes. Inevitability and foreseeability impressions, however, did not differ between the age groups. Thus, there are age differences in hindsight bias after positive and negative outcomes, but only with regard to memory for prior judgments.
Topics: Aged; Bias; Humans; Judgment; Learning; Mental Recall; Retrospective Studies
PubMed: 34129224
DOI: 10.3758/s13421-021-01195-w -
Journal of Experimental Psychology.... Dec 2022Several authors have suggested a deep symmetry between the psychological processes that underlie our ability to remember the past and make predictions about the future....
Several authors have suggested a deep symmetry between the psychological processes that underlie our ability to remember the past and make predictions about the future. The judgment of recency (JOR) task measures temporal order judgments for the past by presenting pairs of probe stimuli; participants choose the probe that was presented more recently. We performed a short-term relative JOR task and introduced a novel judgment of imminence (JOI) task to study temporal order judgments for the future. In the JOR task, participants were presented with a sequence of stimuli and asked to choose which of two probe stimuli was presented closer to the present. In the JOI task, participants were trained on a probabilistic sequence. After training, the sequence was interrupted with probe stimuli. Participants were asked to choose which of two probe stimuli was expected to be presented closer to the present. Replicating prior work on JOR, we found that RT results supported a backward self-terminating search model operating on a temporally organized representation of the past. We also showed that RT distributions are consistent with this model and that the temporally organized representation is compressed. Critically, results for the JOI task probing expectations of the future suggest a forward self-terminating search model operating on a temporally organized representation of the future. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Humans; Time Perception; Judgment; Mental Recall
PubMed: 35913876
DOI: 10.1037/xge0001243 -
International Journal of Environmental... Jul 2021Research on morality has focused on differences in moral judgment and action. In this study, we investigated self-reported moral reasoning after a hypothetical moral...
Research on morality has focused on differences in moral judgment and action. In this study, we investigated self-reported moral reasoning after a hypothetical moral dilemma was presented on paper, and moral reasoning after that very same dilemma was experienced in immersive virtual reality (IVR). We asked open-ended questions and used content analysis to determine moral reasoning in a sample of 107 participants. We found that participants referred significantly more often to abstract principles and consequences for themselves (i.e., it is against the law) after the paper-based moral dilemma compared to the IVR dilemma. In IVR participants significantly more often referred to the consequences for the people involved in the dilemma (i.e., not wanting to hurt that particular person). This supports the separate process theory, suggesting that decision and action might be different moral concepts with different foci regarding moral reasoning. Using simulated moral scenarios thus seems essential as it illustrates possible mechanisms of empathy and altruism being more relevant for moral actions especially given the physical presence of virtual humans in IVR.
Topics: Empathy; Humans; Judgment; Morals; Problem Solving; Virtual Reality
PubMed: 34360328
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18158039 -
Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral... Feb 2023Cognitive theories of depression, and mindfulness theories of well-being, converge on the notion that self-judgment plays a critical role in mental health. However,...
Cognitive theories of depression, and mindfulness theories of well-being, converge on the notion that self-judgment plays a critical role in mental health. However, these theories have rarely been tested via tasks and computational modeling analyses that can disentangle the information processes operative in self-judgments. We applied a drift-diffusion computational model to the self-referential encoding task (SRET) collected before and after an 8-week mindfulness intervention (n = 96). A drift-rate regression parameter representing positive-relative to negative-self-referential judgment strength positively related to mindful awareness and inversely related to depression, both at baseline and over time; however, this parameter did not significantly relate to the interaction between mindful awareness and nonjudgmentalness. At the level of individual depression symptoms, at baseline, a spectrum of symptoms (inversely) correlated with the drift-rate regression parameter, suggesting that many distinct depression symptoms relate to valenced self-judgment between subjects. By contrast, over the intervention, changes in only a smaller subset of anhedonia-related depression symptoms showed substantial relationships with this parameter. Both behavioral and model-derived measures showed modest split-half and test-retest correlations. Results support cognitive theories that implicate self-judgment in depression and mindfulness theories, which imply that mindful awareness should lead to more positive self-views.
Topics: Humans; Depression; Judgment; Mindfulness; Cognition; Computer Simulation
PubMed: 36168080
DOI: 10.3758/s13415-022-01033-9 -
International Journal of Environmental... Aug 2022The study of spatial geometric similarity plays a significant role in spatial data retrieval. Many researchers have examined spatial geometric similarity, which is...
The study of spatial geometric similarity plays a significant role in spatial data retrieval. Many researchers have examined spatial geometric similarity, which is useful for spatial analysis and data retrieval. However, the majority of them focused on objects of the same type. Methods to support the spatial geometric similarity computation for different types of objects are rare, a systematic theory index has not been developed yet, and there has not been a comprehensive computational model of spatial geometric similarity. In this study, we conducted an analysis of the spatial geometric similarity computation based on conformal geometric algebra (CGA), which has certain advantages in the quantitative computation of the measurement information of spatial objects and the qualitative judgment of the topological relations of spatial objects. First, we developed a unified expression model for spatial geometric scenes, integrating shapes of objects and spatial relations between them. Then, we established a model for the spatial geometric similarity computation under various geographical circumstances to provide a novel approach for spatial geometric similarity research. Finally, the computation model was verified through a case study. The study of spatial geometric similarity sheds light on spatial data retrieval, which has scientific significance and practical value.
Topics: Judgment; Mathematics
PubMed: 36078512
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph191710807